Back in Black
by SimplyTully
Summary: Frank Lapidus tries to adjust to life after the Island. Is the Island finished with him? A fragment that won't be continued, I'm afraid. Not slashy.


"So, is that it?" Frank said, trying to relax in the canvas chair in front of the doctor's desk. "Can I go now?"

Ozzy gathered his notes, tests, Rorschach spots and whatnots. "Sure. We're finished here. You were a real trooper." He rose, and Frank did the same. The doctor held out his hand to shake. "We'll let you know the results."

Frank stared at the proffered hand, then at Ozzy's round sweaty face. "Don't give me this officious shit. You know me too well. Am I fit for flying a plane again?"

Ozzy let his hand fall with an outraged grimace. "Come on, Frank! This is just routine. All pilots who've experienced accidents have to take a psych evaluation, you know it."

"Yes, and a lot of them never go back to flying. But I feel fine, Ozzy. You did not answer. You must be able to tell something from the tests already."

The doctor returned to squaring his sheaves of paper, eyes lowered. "There's a chance you've got PTSD," he said hurriedly. "But remote, Frank, very remote. Don't worry."

Frank worried, especially given Ozzy's attitude. "Wait one goddamned moment. I came out of it without a scratch. Okay, some scratches, nothing more. I managed to land the damn plane in one piece, and then got it in the air again." He smiled, knowing it was a strained grin. "Hell, my self-esteem has never been better! Do I look post-traumatically stressed to you?"

Ozzy managed to look up. "Well, you see, Frank, here's what's wrong with you. You can't shrug a plane crash away like that. You're in denial."

"Denial, my ass."

"And then there's the matter of the hallucinations."

"Those were not hallucinations! Ask any of the other survivors..."

"Which one, the 400-year-old guy, or the one who sees dead people?..."

Frank was astonished. "Don't tell me Richard and Miles and the rest are going through this inquisition too!"

The doctor placed his notes under his arm with finality. "I don't know, Frank. They sure did not come to me for a psych evaluation as plane pilots."

"Ozzy, it really happened. I swear."

"Okay. So there's this island where Evil is some black smoke and Good is some random guy, with a plug to keep the energy inside, a six-toed giant foot and dead people whispering, but we can't go check because the island moves through space and time."

Hugo Reyes could not have said it better. At the memory of the sweet young man they had left on the Island, Frank felt the beginning of anger in his chest. "Pretty much, yes," he said coldly.

"It's not your fault. PTSD victims elaborate their trauma in bizarre ways, and I'm sure a good therapist can..."

"Fuck you, Ozzy." Frank turned his back on the doctor.

"The results could come up okay, Frank!" Ozzy called after him, lamely. "You'd go back to flying..."

Frank turned on the door. "Not that you care." He gestured at the stack of tests. "My full name is Franklyn, not Francis." As Ozzy started to leaf frantically through his papers, Frank left the study.

He stepped on the sidewalk and had to breathe deeply for half a minute. He was too angry. He had thought Ozzy was a friend... but why, after all? Because they had smoked weed together in the Seventies? Now they lived in the Ohs or whatever you wanted to call that cursed decade, Frank had not seen weed for a lifetime, and Ozzy would not go out of his way for Frank. If the tests showed evidence of post-traumatic stress disease, he would trust the tests. Frank could get himself evaluated by another doctor. If only poor Jack Shephard had made it back... He was no psychologist, but he would understand what Frank was talking about.

On the other hand, what if it really was post-traumatic stress disease?

Frank started walking, straightening his blue shirt and pushing back his recently-cut hair. He stepped into the parking lot and looked for his old KIA. On coming back from the Island he had found it in his garage at home. Everything was just like he had left it before taking off with that fateful Ajira 316 flight to Guam. They had not become mythical like the Oceanic Six, but he and his plane were listed as missing, and people had celebrated their return. A pretty widow who lived next door to him had let him understand how exactly she would like to celebrate. Frank had not taken her up on her offer yet.

He sat in the car and slammed the door shut. Hell, it meant nothing. He had been back for little more than a month, for God's sake. He had spent a week in the hospital with the other survivors, all treated for dehydration, fatigue and general debilitation. After that, he had literally slept for another week. Give a man some time! He was not supposed to jump straight back into a relationship.

As he drove carefully out of the parking lot, he tried to remember the last woman he had slept with. In his booze days he had been pretty reckless. No "relationships" to speak of; just a bachelor's life. Even in his grace period between the Kahana and Ajira 316, he had not been coy when sparks began to fly with a woman. Yeah... the last one was probably that Vegas dancer. No strings attached, and it had suited them both.

Yet now he could not manage to raise enough interest for the pretty widow next door.

Frank gripped the steering wheel, trying to listen to the radio and failing. In a couple of months he would be fifty-five. He would stop saying he was in his "early fifties". Maybe the plumbing had started to malfunction. Maybe he was truly unfit for flying. Or anything else.

Goddammit, no. He slammed his hands on the steering wheel at the red light. This was depression. He had seen it in other pilots. It usually was inextricably tied to trauma. He had had a good friend at Oceanic once - Paul McConaughey, they had used to tease him by calling him McCartney, also due to a certain resemblance to the Beatle. In 1994 Paul had crash-landed in Shanghai, managing to avoid the crowded skyscrapers but losing a third of his passengers. Frank had seen him spiral down into depression and panic, until he almost passed out at the thought of flying. He had quit his job and dropped off the face of the Earth.

Frank had tried to look him up a couple of times, and Paul had been truly happy to hear from him, but to his grief he had lost the ability to reach out to people. Lately he had deleted his Facebook account. _Paul is dead, man, miss him, miss him, miss him,_ as they sing in _I'm So Tired_. If you listen to it backwards.

Madness.

Was this where Frank was headed? Not the Beatles but Pink Floyd was pouring from the radio. _Learning to Fly_, obviously. The radio always seemed to know who you were.

_Into the distance a ribbon of black_

_Stretched to the point of no turning back_

_A flight of fancy on a windswept field_

_Standing alone my senses reeled_

_A fatal attraction holding me fast, how_

_Can I escape this irresistible grasp? _

_Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies_

_Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I_

Frank steered the KIA into his driveway. He pointedly avoided looking towards the pretty widow's yard. He had beer in the fridge. It was from before Ajira 316 and he had not touched it yet, but right now it felt more enticing than any woman.

_Ice is forming on the tips of my wings_

_Unheeded warnings, I thought I thought of everything_

_No navigator to guide my way home_

_Unladened, empty and turned to stone _

_A soul in tension that's learning to fly_

_Condition grounded but determined to try_

_Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies_

_Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I_

Frank shut the radio off. He dismounted, slammed the door and leaned briefly on the car's hood.

_Well done, Franklyn John Lapidus. Mid-life crisis (mid-life, yeah, maybe ten years ago), impotence, PTSD._ Suddenly KIA meant for him Killed In Action, even though he had never been in a war - too young for Korea, too old for Afghanistan-Iraq, too lazy for either.

He belonged in the sky... and they were taking it away from him.

Tears flooded his eyes. He dashed them away angrily, and turned towards his door. He would spend an evening with that beer, and everything would be all right. For a while. Alcoholism looked attractive again.

"Hey, dude."

Frank whirled about. There on his driveway stood Hugo "Hurley" Reyes, as big as life, which meant very big. One of the many people he had been forced to leave on the Island. One of the most _human_ human beings Frank had ever met.

He pressed his hands on his eyes again. "Oh God. Ozzy was right."

"Who's Ozzy?" Hurley asked.

Frank stared at him. "If you were a hallucination, you'd know who Ozzy is."

"I'm not sure that's how hallucinations work." Hurley shrugged. "Anyway, I'm real." He stepped up and laid a very real, pudgy hand on Frank's arm. "It happened to me too, dead people appearing right and left, and I thought I was crazy, but I wasn't. Neither are you. Oh, and I'm alive."

Frank grasped Hurley's hand. "What - how - why the hell are you here? Why are you not on the Island?"

"Dude, we have a problem," Hurley said. "You have to come back."


End file.
